15. The Waiting Game
Nov. 5th, 2010 05:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rossiPosted a day late due to internet issues, but written yesterday.
They said, back in the early days of the outbreak, that the cities were the worst places to be. And it makes sense. I mean, all those people who could all be potential zombies, lots of places for them to lurk, no natural barriers. But for those of us who lived in the cities, it wasn't like we got that much advanced warning, you know? People getting sick with some kind of weird 'flu one day, evacuations and mass hysteria the next. And not all of us had cars and when things started getting bad, the buses and trains were the first thing to go. So unless you knew someone who was getting out early and had a place to go and a way to get there, you were pretty much stuck.
My mom and me, we stayed home mostly those early days. Barricaded the door of the apartment, filled the tub and every container we could find with water, stocked up on cans and freeze-dried stuff. Our windows were all on one side, overlooking the parking lot and two floors up, so the door was the only real worry and we boarded that up good and tight after the first attack. We kept quiet, drew the curtains and waited for, I dunno, someone in charge to make it all better, I guess.
Only, no-one came. And after a couple of weeks, the food and water started getting low and, to be honest, Mom started getting a bit... weird. Saying stuff about how perhaps we weren't looking at things the right way and reading the Bible a lot. She'd spend a lot of time staring out of the window, down at the zombies wandering around, as if she was looking for someone. Sometimes she'd recognise one - who they used to be, I mean - and be all upset and cry for hours. It got old pretty fast.
Me, I started looking for ways out, for both of us. Safe places to go, maybe other people to join up with. Someone else to talk to, you know? I worked out I could climb up onto the roof if I slung a rope - well, more like a set of knotted sheets with a grappling hook made from the top of the coat rack tied to the end - over the railing of the upstairs neighbour's patio and then climbed up onto their barbecue. I did it at night, so Mom wouldn't know, and I was dead quiet about it, too. From the roof, I could walk along the building tops until the next block, without even the zombies below noticing a thing. I guess whatever they sense us with, it's not a sense of smell, 'cause I was pretty ripe by then from saving the water just for drinking. I didn't see any signs of life past a few cats on the roof as well and they bolted when they sniffed me. Can't say I blame 'em.
Still, it was good, getting out of the apartment and into the air. Eventually I got bored of my little patch of roofs and started looking for ways to get across the road to the next set of roofs. There was a couple of bakeries over there and I figured they'd have ingredients for making stuff, even if the bread and pastries would be mouldy by now. On our side of the street, we only had a book store and a few clothing places, and an optometrist. Not exactly useful in our situation.
Eventually I hit on the idea to make a ladder that would stretch across the street from one set of roofs to the next. It took a while, but I managed to scrounge up enough wood and stuff from the buildings I could reach - mostly off the outside and in the ceilings, since I didn't like the idea of going down into one of them and winding up as zombie food. I started going out in the day, so I could see what I was doing - not that Mom noticed much by then. She was watching the window and praying twenty-four seven. I figured I'd surprise her when I came back with enough flour and yeast to make a loaf a bread as big as the oven would fit.
Yeah, I know, the hydro had been off a while by then. Some types of thinking are harder to let go than others.
The ladder, when I finished, was a rickety damn thing, but I was too impatient to work on it more. I figured I'd lost enough weight that it'd hold me, no trouble. My ladder-making had gathered a crowd of zombies, too, and I knew they wouldn't just wander off on their own, not if they knew there were living people around, so there wasn't much point waiting for a better time. Nope, I decided to go for it then and there and try my luck.
Fuck, I'm amazed I survived this long.
The ladder started cracking about half-way across. By that time, the only thing I could do was crawl as fast as I could for the other side and hope it held. Under me, a good crowd of zombies was waiting, stretching up their hands and moaning. I might live to be a hundred and never forget that sound. Raises the hair on the back of your neck. I scrambled as fast as I could, but it wasn't fast enough - I had a couple of metres left to go when the ladder gave way. One small break, it got tangled up in the hydro wires and kind of hung from there, so I wasn't dropped straight into the zombie pack. I kind of clung on like a cat stuck up a tree, with zombies pulling at my pants legs and what was left of my ladder tangled in the wires and coming to pieces and I was sure I was a goner. All I could think of was what my Mom would do when she saw me shuffling around down in the parking lot. It'd drive her crazy.
The rest of the way, that is.
Life isn't like the movies. I've learned that over the years since the outbreak. You can't trust on luck, the heroes don't always win and when you're dangling from a crappy makeshift ladder above a horde of zombies, you can't expect to be rescued. Only, that's what happened - obviously, since I'm talking to you now - and there was this rope, smacking me in the face and a voice calling for me to grab onto it. I did as I was told since you don't argue in a situation like that, and I was hauled up onto the roof of the bank. I barely had time to realise I wasn't going to be dead before I got smacked upside the head by a big, older man, who asked me if I was retarded or something.
Yeah, that was my first meeting with Cliff. He damn near took my head off. Can't say I blame him.
It turned out they'd been watching me a while, sort of taking stock, trying to decide if I was worth bringing over. Now, don't get me wrong, it's not like they were heartless monsters, leaving us to die, but resources were slim back then. They didn't have the roof gardens and the chicken coop and the rabbits like now. They'd been living off what they could scavenge from the buildings they'd been able to access, eating squirrels and racoons and pigeons. They had to pick carefully who they brought in, make sure they could contribute. Cliff, besides being a tough old son of a bitch, was a maintenance guy and handyman, good at building stuff. Roslyn had lived on a farm as a kid and was good at growing things, as well as was good at climbing. Laura could sew. Millie and Bryson both could cook and Bryson was good at strategy - it was his idea to vet potential newbies. Jack was the odd one out at first glance, being a musician, but he was good at keeping the morale up - even in the worst of it, he manages to make us laugh.
There were others, that came and went. I don't need to draw you a picture, do I?
It's a hard life, up here. In the warmer months, we have to stay up on the rooftops and higher floors, as the zombies gather below and mill around, moaning. The moan gets on your nerves, listening to it day and night. I mean, that's what happened to my mom. We brought her over, did our best to take care of her, but she never really settled. One morning, I got up and she was gone. Just her Bible left behind, open at the Book of Revelation, the part about the dead rising from the grave and ascending to heaven. I didn't really get it, until a few days later, when I saw her with them. Just another zombie, standing and waiting and moaning.
In winter, well, then it's our turn - we wait until they freeze and go down and start taking off heads. That first winter, I smashed my mom's head in myself; as Cliff says, some things you just have to do yourself.
It's a cycle. Every spring and summer, they gather. Every winter, they freeze and we go down and smash them. Rinse and repeat. Jack says there's fewer this year than last, but... I don't know. Every spring, they stagger along the streets, empty-eyed and hungry. They gather and wait, since that's all they know how to do. And we wait, since it's all we can do.
I guess we'll see who gets tired of waiting first.
They said, back in the early days of the outbreak, that the cities were the worst places to be. And it makes sense. I mean, all those people who could all be potential zombies, lots of places for them to lurk, no natural barriers. But for those of us who lived in the cities, it wasn't like we got that much advanced warning, you know? People getting sick with some kind of weird 'flu one day, evacuations and mass hysteria the next. And not all of us had cars and when things started getting bad, the buses and trains were the first thing to go. So unless you knew someone who was getting out early and had a place to go and a way to get there, you were pretty much stuck.
My mom and me, we stayed home mostly those early days. Barricaded the door of the apartment, filled the tub and every container we could find with water, stocked up on cans and freeze-dried stuff. Our windows were all on one side, overlooking the parking lot and two floors up, so the door was the only real worry and we boarded that up good and tight after the first attack. We kept quiet, drew the curtains and waited for, I dunno, someone in charge to make it all better, I guess.
Only, no-one came. And after a couple of weeks, the food and water started getting low and, to be honest, Mom started getting a bit... weird. Saying stuff about how perhaps we weren't looking at things the right way and reading the Bible a lot. She'd spend a lot of time staring out of the window, down at the zombies wandering around, as if she was looking for someone. Sometimes she'd recognise one - who they used to be, I mean - and be all upset and cry for hours. It got old pretty fast.
Me, I started looking for ways out, for both of us. Safe places to go, maybe other people to join up with. Someone else to talk to, you know? I worked out I could climb up onto the roof if I slung a rope - well, more like a set of knotted sheets with a grappling hook made from the top of the coat rack tied to the end - over the railing of the upstairs neighbour's patio and then climbed up onto their barbecue. I did it at night, so Mom wouldn't know, and I was dead quiet about it, too. From the roof, I could walk along the building tops until the next block, without even the zombies below noticing a thing. I guess whatever they sense us with, it's not a sense of smell, 'cause I was pretty ripe by then from saving the water just for drinking. I didn't see any signs of life past a few cats on the roof as well and they bolted when they sniffed me. Can't say I blame 'em.
Still, it was good, getting out of the apartment and into the air. Eventually I got bored of my little patch of roofs and started looking for ways to get across the road to the next set of roofs. There was a couple of bakeries over there and I figured they'd have ingredients for making stuff, even if the bread and pastries would be mouldy by now. On our side of the street, we only had a book store and a few clothing places, and an optometrist. Not exactly useful in our situation.
Eventually I hit on the idea to make a ladder that would stretch across the street from one set of roofs to the next. It took a while, but I managed to scrounge up enough wood and stuff from the buildings I could reach - mostly off the outside and in the ceilings, since I didn't like the idea of going down into one of them and winding up as zombie food. I started going out in the day, so I could see what I was doing - not that Mom noticed much by then. She was watching the window and praying twenty-four seven. I figured I'd surprise her when I came back with enough flour and yeast to make a loaf a bread as big as the oven would fit.
Yeah, I know, the hydro had been off a while by then. Some types of thinking are harder to let go than others.
The ladder, when I finished, was a rickety damn thing, but I was too impatient to work on it more. I figured I'd lost enough weight that it'd hold me, no trouble. My ladder-making had gathered a crowd of zombies, too, and I knew they wouldn't just wander off on their own, not if they knew there were living people around, so there wasn't much point waiting for a better time. Nope, I decided to go for it then and there and try my luck.
Fuck, I'm amazed I survived this long.
The ladder started cracking about half-way across. By that time, the only thing I could do was crawl as fast as I could for the other side and hope it held. Under me, a good crowd of zombies was waiting, stretching up their hands and moaning. I might live to be a hundred and never forget that sound. Raises the hair on the back of your neck. I scrambled as fast as I could, but it wasn't fast enough - I had a couple of metres left to go when the ladder gave way. One small break, it got tangled up in the hydro wires and kind of hung from there, so I wasn't dropped straight into the zombie pack. I kind of clung on like a cat stuck up a tree, with zombies pulling at my pants legs and what was left of my ladder tangled in the wires and coming to pieces and I was sure I was a goner. All I could think of was what my Mom would do when she saw me shuffling around down in the parking lot. It'd drive her crazy.
The rest of the way, that is.
Life isn't like the movies. I've learned that over the years since the outbreak. You can't trust on luck, the heroes don't always win and when you're dangling from a crappy makeshift ladder above a horde of zombies, you can't expect to be rescued. Only, that's what happened - obviously, since I'm talking to you now - and there was this rope, smacking me in the face and a voice calling for me to grab onto it. I did as I was told since you don't argue in a situation like that, and I was hauled up onto the roof of the bank. I barely had time to realise I wasn't going to be dead before I got smacked upside the head by a big, older man, who asked me if I was retarded or something.
Yeah, that was my first meeting with Cliff. He damn near took my head off. Can't say I blame him.
It turned out they'd been watching me a while, sort of taking stock, trying to decide if I was worth bringing over. Now, don't get me wrong, it's not like they were heartless monsters, leaving us to die, but resources were slim back then. They didn't have the roof gardens and the chicken coop and the rabbits like now. They'd been living off what they could scavenge from the buildings they'd been able to access, eating squirrels and racoons and pigeons. They had to pick carefully who they brought in, make sure they could contribute. Cliff, besides being a tough old son of a bitch, was a maintenance guy and handyman, good at building stuff. Roslyn had lived on a farm as a kid and was good at growing things, as well as was good at climbing. Laura could sew. Millie and Bryson both could cook and Bryson was good at strategy - it was his idea to vet potential newbies. Jack was the odd one out at first glance, being a musician, but he was good at keeping the morale up - even in the worst of it, he manages to make us laugh.
There were others, that came and went. I don't need to draw you a picture, do I?
It's a hard life, up here. In the warmer months, we have to stay up on the rooftops and higher floors, as the zombies gather below and mill around, moaning. The moan gets on your nerves, listening to it day and night. I mean, that's what happened to my mom. We brought her over, did our best to take care of her, but she never really settled. One morning, I got up and she was gone. Just her Bible left behind, open at the Book of Revelation, the part about the dead rising from the grave and ascending to heaven. I didn't really get it, until a few days later, when I saw her with them. Just another zombie, standing and waiting and moaning.
In winter, well, then it's our turn - we wait until they freeze and go down and start taking off heads. That first winter, I smashed my mom's head in myself; as Cliff says, some things you just have to do yourself.
It's a cycle. Every spring and summer, they gather. Every winter, they freeze and we go down and smash them. Rinse and repeat. Jack says there's fewer this year than last, but... I don't know. Every spring, they stagger along the streets, empty-eyed and hungry. They gather and wait, since that's all they know how to do. And we wait, since it's all we can do.
I guess we'll see who gets tired of waiting first.
